Like many women, I wouldn’t much like being called a “vagina” (though over the years I’ve had worse). Hilary Mantel’s depiction of the Duchess of Cambridge and previous royal consorts as gawped-at body parts expected to breed and scrub-up well for public consumption — “a royal lady is a royal vagina” — was blunt, provocative and unflattering. But no one with the faintest knowledge of history could claim it isn’t true. Here was a skilful, mostly sympathetic critique of royalty and its fetishisation — yet, to see some of the pitchforkery that greeted it, you’d think Mantel was some shape-shifting witch suckling Satan